The off-Broadway play imagining Prince George as gay

Telegraph

6 hours ago

Last Saturday, Prince George cut a dignified figure as he joined the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the Trooping the Colour ceremony. But, across the Atlantic, a very different picture is being painted of the future king in a controversial new off-Broadway play with a gasp-inducing title: Prince Faggot.
Canadian writer Jordan Tannahill 's highly speculative royal romp, which this week premiered at Playwrights Horizons, is set in 2032 and sees 18-year-old Oxford student Prince George, nicknamed 'Tips' (played by British actor John McCrea), return home to introduce his Indian boyfriend Dev (Mihir Kumar) to the Prince and Princess of Wales (African-American actor K. Todd Freeman and transgender actress Rachel Crowl).
Dev is nervous, quipping that George's parents might fear 'We've got another Meghan'; Prince Andrew also gets a name-check in the context of the royal family's fraught history. Tannahill's juicy drama then envisions the tabloid feeding frenzy that follows their relationship going public (including fury from Piers Morgan), and internet comments such as 'Glad someone's adding some spice to that Yorkshire pudding'.
Audiences at Prince Faggot must place their phones in lockable Yondr pouches to prevent anyone taking pictures or videos. The reason for that soon becomes apparent: McCrea and Kumar appear naked during graphic sex scenes.
They experiment with poppers, acid and S&M fetish: Prince George appears in bondage and shares a kinky fantasy of being walked like a puppy.
Prince George also imagines communing with the ghosts of former allegedly gay monarchs: Edward II, Queen Anne, James I, and Richard the Lionheart. Tannahill wraps in postcolonial angst too, with Dev fretting: 'Getting f---ed by the Prince of England? My ancestors would never forgive me.'
N'yome Allure Stewart plays a feisty Princess Charlotte (Prince Louis doesn't appear). When her father, concerned about Prince George's explosive fling, says 'Our job is to serve, not to make spectacles of ourselves', she shoots back that they already make a spectacle 'with capes and crowns and motorcades'.
Tannahill, an experimental, gay writer, frequently has his 'queer and trans' cast break the fourth wall, refracting their own life experiences through this provocative premise. Stewart talks about earning her version of a royal title at a New York drag ball, and there is discussion around those in power versus marginalised communities.
Earnest explorations aside, this is the latest example of a peculiarly pervasive trend: Americans turning our royal family into an explicitly gay soap opera. The jumping-off point for the play is the viral 2017 photograph of the real four-year-old Prince George visiting a military helicopter in Hamburg. The young prince gasped in delight when he spied the chopper and struck a dramatic pose with his hands clasped to his face.
Addressing the Prince Faggot audience, actor Mihir Kumar compares the image to a fey photo of himself as a boy, stating: 'We know one of our own when we see one because we ourselves were once queer children.'
Internet commentators were certainly gripped by the 'Sassy Prince George' phenomenon. Posts on Twitter (now X) included: 'Prince George is already a bigger gay icon to me than Boy George', 'Do we have our first openly gay royal?', and 'Guys what if Prince George is gay and it causes a constitutional crisis?'.
American writer Gary Janetti, who worked on TV shows like Will & Grace and Family Guy, went viral with his spoof Instagram posts imagining Prince George delivering catty zingers to his family – especially Meghan Markle. In one post, 'George' responds to a news story about Meghan doing her make-up in the back of an Uber by sneering 'Does she get dressed in the back of an Uber, too? Because that would explain a lot.'
Janetti's work grew so popular that HBO turned it into an animated sitcom called The Prince in 2021, starring Orlando Bloom, Alan Cumming, Sophie Turner and Dan Stevens.
Two years later, streamer Amazon Prime Video premiered the film adaptation of non-binary author Casey McQuiston's steamy novel Red, White & Royal Blue, about a gay romance between a closeted British prince and the son of the female President of the United States.
Nicholas Galitzine starred as Prince Henry, who bears a physical resemblance to Prince William, but, as the rebellious 'spare' in a contentious relationship, is more obviously inspired by Prince Harry. Perhaps it's the Montecito exile who has turbo-charged this American fascination with royal figures who both benefit from and chafe against their hereditary privilege.
Putting a queer spin on our princes allows these writers to indulge in the fantasy of regal luxury – a sort of real-life Disney fairy tale, or a more refined version of their celebrity culture – while also rebelling against it by introducing a transgressive element, and comparing the stuffy Brits unfavourably with the enlightened Americans.
In Red, White & Royal Blue, Prince Henry's lover Alex accuses him of being a conformist snob, and the prince eventually confesses that he feels trapped by tradition. Indeed, the disapproving King, Henry's grandfather (played by Stephen Fry), thunders: 'The nation simply will not accept a prince who is homosexual.'
In contrast, Uma Thurman's liberal President warmly welcomes her son's coming out, cheerily asking: 'So are you gay? Bi? Fluid? Pan? Queer?', and offering to help him get on the HIV-prevention drug Truvada.
Amazon also gifted viewers the bizarre historical fantasy series My Lady Jane in 2024, featuring a gay King Edward VI, plus characters who turn into animals and are 'othered' by society, in another clunky marginalisation metaphor.
This trend arguably reached its apotheosis with the horrifically kitsch musical Diana, about the late Princess of Wales, which (dis)graced Broadway in 2021. Although none of the characters were gay, it is unarguably camp trash.
Are all of these depictions a grave insult to the institution? Not really. When the material is this navel-gazing, fluffy or downright dumb, it's hard to take it seriously. If anything, it's an odd compliment: a sign that the Americans still can't get enough of our royals, even if they have to view them through a fictionalised, flamboyantly queer modern lens to justify their enduring obsession.